Economics: Labor Profiles: Arab States

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The term labor is often used by economists, statisticians, and policymakers to describe market oriented or subsistence production. As feminists have pointed out, such definitions tend to minimize the contributions of women. This is particularly true in Arab communities, where official estimates of women's labor force participation (the number of women in the labor force divided by the number of working age women) range from 11 percent in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to 35 percent in Morocco, with an average of 28 percent (World Bank 2004).